Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics with me Steve Richards richards the festive edition a light-hearted look at

covid brexit and all the other relaxing issues whirling over our heads in this mad week of christmas and

you know everything is completely barmy any reasoned leader would look at the chaos

around at the moment and delay Brexit. That is one thing theoretically in the power of a prime

minister. I know it's tricky because with a wholly misjudged Swagger and McKismo at the beginning,

Johnson put into law that the extension would end on December 31st, thinking that would add to his

muscularity in this negotiation. It's just causing mayhem and there are other logistical problems, but it could be done with clear-minded leadership, but reason isn't playing any part at all in British politics at the moment.

And so as we kind of await Christmas Day, there is Brexit and COVID coming together and creating chaos of all kinds.

Anyway, you'll have been up to your heads in COVID and Brexit and rearranging Christmas plans

and looking at queues of lorries and wondering whether

you'll be able to get that fresh cauliflower that plays such an important part on Christmas Day or perhaps Boxing Day.

So I thought we'd do something slightly different, though there will be connections with all these epic dramas, making this a freakish

Christmas, the freakish, of course, since wartime. And it's based around one of your brilliant

emails. And this one's from Tony Armet, from Solehel. And Tony says, hi, Steve, continuing to love the podcast, I would like to put forward a

suggestion or idea for the podcast which I'd like you to consider and it's this. As you've been around

politics and politicians for so many years, again, it makes me feel about 90. I'm a mere youth in this

game but I do like looking back and

putting things into context because it's only when you contextualize that things begin to make sense.

It's something John Burt tried to do at the BBC, but even though he was seen as control-free,

couldn't really do it. He always used to say context is the key.

That's what the BBC can do.

Place things into a wider context, but on the whole he failed in that particular mission.

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